Chapter 45 Present Day #2
Oscar had spoken with Doctor and Missus Jō before leaving for the 9 a.m. train to Fontainebleau.
They were spending the day at the Louvre and wished him well.
Missus Jō asked how his time with the French girl had gone, and Oscar told her they were simply good friends.
She seemed disappointed, but Sensei said with relief, “See, aspirin works every time.” He reminded Oscar the team would leave in the morning to return home.
In no hurry, Oscar took the bus from the train station and decided on the three-hour tour of the entire chateau.
He had no other plans for the day and walking the gardens and the palace would mean getting plenty of exercise.
Plus, it was a beautiful day to spend on the expansive grounds.
And somewhere along the way, he was sure he would see this painting of the Japanese princess…
this Juliet that his great-great-great-great-grandfather fell head over heels for.
His only travel hitch had been when he’d carried the shoebox through security at the entrance and quickly found himself surrounded by gun-carrying guards demanding to see what the box contained.
When he showed them the letters, the glass bottle, and the hairpin, there was much discussion, and Oscar worried he still might fail Sensei’s edict not to land in jail.
But it satisfied the guards when Oscar had the wherewithal to suggest he’d brought the box to ask the curator about the objects, and they let him pass with the box and items.
Oscar followed the tour guide and thirty other people through a room full of antiquities.
As they entered the grand hallway, he admired the ornate gold ceiling.
The magnificent chateau overwhelmed his senses.
Priceless art adorned every wall and ceiling, from petite icons to colossal renaissance murals dating back hundreds of years—religious themes, landscapes, florals, and more nudes than Oscar could count.
But perhaps it was the enormity of the chateau that made him feel small. Here he was in this opulent world, a nonentity from a modest town in Montana, somehow connected to one of the most famous artists not only in France but in the world.
Somehow, in the mysteries of the universe, Oscar wondered how Monet’s love of art and Japanese culture could float through all these generations to settle in his own self. His looks and some of his mannerisms certainly had, and the confusion and angst of being a bastard son probably had as well.
But if anything, this trip had grounded him. France had held the anchor. After all, his great-great-great-great-grandfather was Claude Oscar Monet. Somehow, that melted some of the sting and anger caused by his best friend, his fiancé, and his mother.
He doubted even his biological father Pat Hoshed knew any of this. Next time he was in Montana, Oscar would definitely visit him to share the news about their remarkable heritage and what he’d learned about the sword.
He’d fantasized all week about someday traveling to Japan with Sensei to return the sword. Maybe they could visit some kendo clubs there. According to his new roommates, Tom and Ashley, training in Japan went to a whole other level.
* * *
Gravel crunched under Julia’s tennis shoes as she walked along the trail, the tranquil green English Garden on her right and the placid lake on her left.
It was just as Yuria described in her journal.
Little had changed in a hundred and sixty years.
What did she think of the majesty of the Emperor’s palace, the vastness of the estate, the grandeur of the grounds?
In her writings, Yuria recounted her evening stroll with her father, a rare glimpse of intimacy between the two. Certainly, nothing had changed of a father’s importance to his daughter in all these years.
Julia stepped from the shadow of the trees to the shoreline of the lake, and the morning sun instantly warmed her face.
A large swan stretched its neck, trumpeted, and flapped its wings, momentarily lifting off the water to make a royal announcement that an intruder had entered their solitude, and the other swans stirred awake.
“This could be the very spot,” she told herself—a gentle sloped shore with a perfect vista of the pavilion that appeared to float magically in the middle of the lake.
The spot that Yuria described when coming across a flustered Monet, singing a lullaby, and painting this marvelous scene, the spot where her heart beat with a new rhythm—falling in love with a man she barely knew.
Julia inhaled it all in with a deep breath. She closed her eyes and imagined her maternal line of relatives standing there with her, all these strong, beautiful women.
These strong, beautiful women were there beside her, and Julia bowed to them all. “Thank you, Grandmama, for sending me.” Joy and sorrow mixed together, along with defeat and triumph, rejection and delight, shame and honor. Her own heart brushed with the myriad colors of life.
The strong, beautiful women encouraging her to continue the story, to fulfill her own mission to help the needy, to heal the sick, to comfort the weary. Yes, in whatever form it took, Julia was sure she would become the best physician possible.
Tears streamed down her face as she opened her purse and took out the white chrysanthemum that Grandmama had given to her.
Grandmama had told her to “place this on the water for me, for you, for all the women in our lives—for the purity of the soul’s journey to the afterlife.”
Julia kissed the graceful blossom, bent to the edge of the lake, and set the flower adrift.